Apologetic and Polemical Aspects of Yerīḇūnī ʿAlei ʿOzḇī Berīt El

Abstract

Research into Jewish polemics with Islam tends to focus mainly on purely polemical works and to overlook polemical references in other literary texts. This article attempts to correct this tendency by investigating apologetic as well as polemical allusions in Yerīḇūnī ʿalei ʿozḇī berīt El, a twelfth-century CE poem by a Jew of unknown identity who converted to Islam and later recanted. The stanzas of this work alternate between apologetics toward Jews in the poet’s surroundings and polemics against Islam. The inquiry sheds some light on Jewish-Muslim relations in that era and demonstrates the potential benefits of similar investigation of additional literary texts.